A diverting misadventure about a legal representative’s illegalities.
An American lawyer seeking adventure and a hefty payout sets up a drug deal in Glenn’s Southern novel.
After breaking up with his longtime girlfriend, North Carolina litigator Eddie Terrell takes some time off in Montana. That’s where he meets Mikey Riewey in a bar. She heads back to Winston-Salem with Eddie and hears details of his new, decidedly illegal endeavor. He wants to buy and sell cocaine just long enough to make a substantial profit. Eddie enlists the help of clients—Rise Peak; Rise’s little brother, Kenny; and Curt Minor—each of whom he separately represented on criminal charges. As they come up with potential sellers and buyers, Eddie looks for investors, though he doesn’t necessarily let them know what they’re investing in. Unfortunately, the deal may be over before it starts, as Rise’s squeeze surmises the others are working on something without him. Keeping him quiet could mean committing a crime significantly more serious than dealing drugs. Eddie, meanwhile, continues his legit job, working an insurance fraud case with help from Mikey and his legal assistant. He can only hope that Rise, Kenny, and Curt complete the cocaine transaction without any further troubles. In spite of the brazen lawbreaking, Glenn’s tale is often humorous. For example, Rise and the others do cocaine pickups in what they believe is an inconspicuous short school bus. Eddie also likes to relay to Mikey comical accounts of family and work. These stories, however, like losing his virginity at 14, initially bog down the narrative, especially when the cocaine deal is barely underway. But the story quickly accelerates once the bus-driving cocaine dealers go on the road, and Eddie litigates a surprisingly interesting case, which entails an incriminating video (The Pussy Preacher). While there’s not much of a climax, the gratifying ending offers a thorough resolution.
A diverting misadventure about a legal representative’s illegalities. (dedication, acknowledgements)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 422
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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